To my Mirtle

by William Blake

Notebook 34 - To my Mirtle

1st reading:^[1]

To my Mirtle

5 Why should I be bound to thee,
6 O my lovely mirtle tree?
   [Love, free love, cannot be bound
   To any tree that grows on ground. del]
1 To a lovely mirtle bound,
2 Blossoms show'ring all around,
   [Like to dung upon the ground,
   Underneath my mirtle bound. del]
3 O, how sick & weary I
4 Underneath my mirtle lie.

________

2nd reading:^[2]

To my Mirtle

To a lovely mirtle bound
Blossoms showring all around
O how sick & weary I
Underneath my mirtle lie
Why should I be bound to thee
O my lovely mirtle tree^[3]

________

Wikisource notes

1. "Blake Complete Writings", ed. Geoffrey Keynes, pub. OUP 1966/85, p. 176.
2. "The Complete Poetry & Prose of William Blake", ed. by David V. Erdman, Anchor Books, 1988, p. 475
3. To my Mirtle N 106 rev
   Salvaging unused lines from the “Infant Sorrow” stanzas of p 111 (see above, p 798), Blake first wrote down the “O how sick” couplet but then erased it before the ink was dry. He then copied the stanza numbered “1” and then canceled its second couplet, perhaps not before continuing with two more couplets from p 111 on the “bound-ground” rhyme:
   To a lovely mirtle bound
   Blossoms showring all around
   Like to dung upon the ground
   Underneath my mirtle bound
   He then canceled, selected, and rearranged lines to make the present poem, all that remains not lined through in the Notebook, and he gave it a title. (A similar process of reduction takes place with the “Fayette” lines. See below.)